Johnson, Richard Colles

Obtained M.A. in sociology and criminology at the University of Michigan in 1951.

Bibliographer and librarian at the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois.

Richard Colles ("Rick") Johnson was born at Pestoskey, Michigan on September 7, 1939. After graduating from Yale University in 1961, he earned masters' degrees from the University of Michigan, in Library Science, in 1962 and from Northwestern University, in English Literature, in 1966. He began his career at the Newberry Library as a Reference Librarian in 1963, and remained there for the rest of his life. From his maternal grandmother and great aunt, Johnson gained an interest in his Colles family heritage, which some claimed went back to the twelfth century in Worcestershire, England, and to the sixteenth Century in Ireland. As early as 1956, Rick began contacting and corresponding with Colles relatives to seek information and documentation on the family. Using the indefatigable research skills carried over from his bibliographical studies, Rick was able to amass 13 boxes of correspondence and copies of documents that attest to the family's longevity, intermarriages, and prominence. Rick continued this lustrous and lasting work by his contributions to bibliography and librarianship until his death from lung cancer in 1998.